I spent too long, and burned through a lot of tokens today, giving Claude a chance to find a weird issue that I wasn't sure whether it was CSS or library-based.
It went deep, checking through the node modules of a library trying to find any little differences which might explain the issue I was having.
It suggested I rewrite some of the components with things it found which were prepended with UNSAFE_ and UNSTABLE_.
It even invented a "known issue"! When I asked for the source, it apologised,
"I need to be honest — I don’t have a source for that. It was speculation, not a documented issue. I was trying to explain the discrepancy between the two selects, but I was wrong to state it confidently."
WTF?
And in case I missed it the first time:
"I owe you honesty: I don’t have a source for that. I was speculating and stated it more confidently than I should have. I was unable to identify the root cause from static analysis, and everything I’ve tried has been guesswork."
In the end,
the answer was so daft and so simple, I could only laugh in disbelief at the rabbit holes this thing had gone down looking for the answer --
It's an over-engineered Select (yes I know, but it's a good headless library), I had forgotten to deal with the situation when the number of options made the list longer than the popover trying to contain it. The options listbox then overflowed the button that opened it.
On click, the mouse-down opened the listbox, the mouse-up immediately chose a value.
ALL IT NEEDED WAS `overflow: auto;` ON THE POPOVER! THAT WAS ALL!
Fuck's sake. I was laughing and livid at the same time.
I'm an idiot. Claude's an idiot. But apparently I'm a better idiot, when I don't choose to let this piece of shit think for me.
I've been there too many times to bother counting them.
Think first, and only then use the tool. Even if the tool is supposed to be able to do the thinking. It won't.
Easy to say, hard to do; I know. Sigh.
@jgg I had done a lot of thinking already and hadn't found the answer - hence figuring I could give it a go seeing as the company set us all up with it.
I have used it a few times here and there and it's been relatively helpful.
This was so daft though. I need to find a better way to reset myself and try again, than burning through useless tokens.
Be cautious. Each time an AI have throw me off rail, it has made me waste more time than the total time it gained for me the 10 times I used it before.
And it is not easy to be aware of when it happens.
@jgg yep yep. This was the first time I got this outright faked stuff. It was weird.
Usually, if it is the 6th iteration for basically the same question, the AI has gone dry and starts making up things directly. Many times it takes even less.
@jgg mm, it was probably 2 or 3 exchanges in, when I had tried suggested changes which hadn't fixed the issue, when it did this.